• Communities with higher levels of racial

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Mon Mar 7 21:30:46 2022
    Communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health
    outcomes
    Area-level racial prejudice drives health inequities, research finds


    Date:
    March 7, 2022
    Source:
    American Psychological Association
    Summary:
    People who live in communities with higher levels of racial
    prejudice have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease
    and mental health problems and higher overall mortality rates,
    according to new research.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== People who live in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice
    have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease and mental
    health problems and higher overall mortality rates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.


    ==========================================================================
    The researchers conducted a systematic review of fourteen papers that
    used data gathered from Google, Twitter and other big-data sources to
    look at how prejudice and health are intertwined in communities across
    the United States.

    "Racism is gaining recognition as a fundamental driver of health
    inequities," said lead study author Eli Michaels, MPH, a doctoral
    candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. "Leveraging big
    data to capture area-level racial prejudice is one innovative approach
    to measuring the overall racial climate in which people live, work, play
    and pray. The studies included in this review revealed that living in
    an area with high levels of racial prejudice may harm health and widen
    racial health inequities." The research was published in the journal
    Health Psychology.

    The studies in the review used a variety of sources to measure
    community-level racial prejudice and included tens of millions of data
    points from large-scale surveys, internet searches and social media. Three studies analyzed data from Google Trends on how often users' searches
    included a racial slur. Four studies analyzed data from Twitter on tweets
    that included negative sentiments toward people of color. Three studies
    used data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative
    survey of social and political attitudes in the United States. And four
    studies used data from Project Implicit, an online tool that assesses
    people's implicit biases toward various groups. All of the data were
    coded by geographic area.

    The studies examined how these different indicators of area-level racial prejudice correlated with health outcomes among individuals living
    in those areas, including mortality rates, adverse birth outcomes for
    mothers and infants, cardiovascular outcomes, mental health and overall self-rated health.

    All of the studies found an association between communities' levels of
    racial prejudice and adverse health outcomes for the people of color
    who lived there; four studies also showed a similar association among
    white residents (two studies showed a smaller but still harmful effect
    on whites compared with people of color).

    "The majority of research on racial discrimination and health to date has focused on experiences at the individual level," said Amani M. Allen,
    PhD, MPH, a professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at
    the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and senior
    author of the study.

    "The emerging body of work examined in this review is an important step
    in going above the level of the individual to capture the context of
    place and how it may impact the health of people living in those places,"
    Allen said. "As we see from this review, living in an environment with
    an overall climate that is prejudiced against people of color is not
    only bad for racially marginalized groups, but for everyone. Area-level
    racial prejudice is a social determinant of population health." There are various theories as to how community racial prejudice may harm health, according to the researchers. One is that at an individual level, living
    in a community with more prejudice could increase the number of prejudiced interactions that a person experiences, causing harmful stress. At
    the community level, more racial prejudice may erode social capital --
    defined as "the norms of reciprocity, trust and social obligation" in
    a community - - leading to less social and emotional support to buffer stressful life events and less political support for policies and programs
    that could enhance the health and welfare of all community members.

    More research is needed to disentangle these various factors that may
    tie community-level racial prejudice to adverse health outcomes for
    communities overall and for people of color in particular, according to
    the researchers.

    "Because racism is multidimensional, dismantling it and its effects on
    health will require multidimensional solutions," Michaels said. "Research identifying the root causes of, and testing interventions to shift,
    our collective prejudice is an urgent priority."

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
    American_Psychological_Association. Note: Content may be edited for
    style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Eli K. Michaels, Christine Board, Mahasin S. Mujahid, Corinne
    A. Riddell,
    David H. Chae, Rucker C. Johnson, Amani M. Allen. Area-level racial
    prejudice and health: A systematic review.. Health Psychology,
    2022; DOI: 10.1037/hea0001141 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307190702.htm

    --- up 1 week, 10 hours, 51 minutes
    * Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)